The Glass Explorer initiative will allow the general public to try out the headset and offer feedback on how Google can develop the hardware and its features.

Hopeful applicants are invited to write up to 50 words explaining what they would do with the headset and post them on Google+ or Twitter along with pictures or short movies.

The #ifihadglass competition is open to US residents over 18 only, and selected participants will still need to purchase their own headset for $1500, plus tax.

John Hanke, head of Google Maps, recently told Dezeen that smart glasses and wearable computers will soon guide people through airports and shops and allow them to pay for goods and services. "In the future the whole transaction could happen through Google Glass, payment and everything," he said.

Comments

You can try, mik. I'd rather using these glasses. The future looks amazing.

Lukas

Calling people "creative" buying/wearing this device is actually a really sad thing. we´re not all stupid yet! As an esthete I wouldn´t wear those in public. In my opinion the design above does make people look clueless. The horizontal "brainbumper" line across the face is probably the main reason as it does not function for real glasses.

Interesting object to think about design and the human body. I think as an everyday device this technical invention will be quite good in causing mental disorders here and there. Let´s see!

So what happens to us who have to wear normal glasses? Will the Google Glass be compatible with normal vision correction eyeglass?

Tom

What are you supposed to do if you already wear glasses?

Sam

Up next: people walking into walls and traffic.

Anton Huggler

That's why they are designed like a bumper!

Joe

This will be of no use to Scottish people, ken?

Stephan

I've been using e-devices as an early adopter for 25 years. I was fascinated and know a lot about the visions of engineers and artists relating to humans and technology - cyborg, science (fiction) and so on.

But the more I know, the more the visions of humans (from the last 150 years) are possible, it becomes clear to me: I don't want to be a (kind of) cyborg. And I don't want to be surrounded by peeping people who are "on" always. I want my freedom, my secrets, my outer and inner peace.

Let's think about what technology like this (owned by a very big private company) does with us.

Mumrah.

Missed a trick - should have called it Google Goggle.

T,.T

Goggle it, or Googlass it.

Joe

I take issue with the prospect that whenever I go out in public, I could be covertly recorded by anyone wearing these things (or simply by the will of Google). This is the kind of self-surveilling dystopian vision that made We Live in Public so horrifying. Don't get me wrong, I'm no luddite, but I'm not an addict, either.

Also, people look like absolute morons walking around staring into nothing and talking into their glasses. Keep your private affairs to yourself, and stay the hell out of mine while you're at it.

Do we not realize that we are being slowly stripped of our autonomy, privacy, and sovereignty? We are are the constant scrutiny of our peers, everything is recorded and forever, and all conversations, interactions, and indeed even movements are logged away in some company's servers for perusal by whichever agency feels the desire.

It's already insufferable to have friends whip out their iPhones during a conversation because they can't remember something (gee, I wonder why) or, worse, they have an incoming text message that simply can't be ignored. Now they won't even have to reach into their pocket to ignore you.

And does anyone else see the supreme, hilarious-were-it-not-so-pathetically-stupid, irony of speaking words into a device which converts the speech into text and sends the text to the other person to READ? What ever happened to phone calls!? We might as well convert it into morse code, at this point. Are we so afraid of ourselves, and so narcissistic that we can't speak directly to one another, but still feel the need to hear our own voices?

Professor Farnsworth said it best: "I don't want to live on this planet anymore."

mik

OK, you are kind of a brainwashed-handicapped-whatever Woody Allen, I understand!

In your post you said: "Professor Farnsworth said it best: 'I don't want to live on this planet anymore'."

So what? What's your point? Are you my boyfriend or girlfriend? I don't know but I don't think so.

Mark astle

These are already dead in the water. Like 3D TV. Tech that nobody needs or wants and actually makes life more complicated.

Thor

God I hope so... I will now pray, for the first time ever.

PeterB

After what we have seen become of all other recent personal technologies, these will surely be the source of so much future pornography and used to record and distribute everything - sex, assault, rape, murder, paedophilia and anything else twisted.

Seeing the hot-air balloon shots in this ad just reinforces what might happen in the case of wearers unfortunate enough to be in the position of those in Egypt this week.

It is just so invasive! Sci-fi novelists have predicted this for many years.

mik

Peter, can you explain your comment? I am not sure if I got it.

Dan

Read about how Google is in talks with Warby Parker about designing Glass in more fashionable frames.

Jonathan

New incarnation of the bluetooth ear piece for mobile phones. Instantaneously both faintly comical and sad.

Andy

Completely agree. And has anyone used those bluetooth ear pieces apart from taxi drivers? That was going to be the future, too. This future may be just end as a video on YouTube.